I didn't watch the Maddow Iraq War special tonight. But I wonder....

As a country, what have we learned? The Iraq War debacle - indeed, even the Afghanistan War in response to 911 - shows how fiery nationalism and - yes, hubris - often trumps taking some time to formulate an approach that actually has a chance to work, rather than just go off and bomb and kill, and wind up in endless turmoil, at great financial and human cost, with dire impacts both here and abroad.

Throw in the seduction of the profits of war, inevitable posturing of politicians (as well as hidden agendas), fear of being labeled "soft", concern with political legacy, the fog of "pre-war" (so to speak), the role of the rah rah media - human history shows a very poor track record of learning from past mistakes. Is it just the inevitability of all of our various faults and weaknesses as a species?

Hopefully it will be a long time until we are tested again. But I worry that even though we have a 24 hour news cycle and all sorts of social media tools, the wisdom of some eye opening reporting and look-back specials such as tonight's Maddow special, we will end up with the same knee jerk types of erroneous, instant reaction, and similar "mistakes" of judgement (or worse).